IRS POSTS DRAFTS OF EMPLOYER MANDATE FORMS — We may not know the long-term fate of the unpopular employer mandate until well past the November elections, but the IRS posted draft forms on Thursday. It’s a clear sign from the Obama administration that as far as it’s concerned, it’s sticking with the timeline announced this winter. The provision has been delayed twice, so when we heard that there was news coming out of the IRS last night, we were poised to cancel our evening plans…well, except for me, since my plan was to write PULSE. The Pro story: http://politico.pro/UrdmXs

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--The Retail Industry Leaders Association said the information was still too tentative and too incomplete. “Retailers have been pounding their heads, asking for this information from the IRS in order to get their systems up and running and comply with these requirements beginning this January,” said RILA’s Christine Pollack.

--Calm down, the IRS replied. Instructions will be out in August, and forms will be finalized later in the year. “In accordance with the IRS’ normal process, these draft forms are being provided to help stakeholders, including employers, tax professionals and software providers, prepare for these new reporting provisions and to invite comments from them,” the agency said in a statement: http://1.usa.gov/Uwf3m1

--AND … the IRS was busy Thursday! It published a rule clarifying its premium tax credit policy for complicated family and household situations, including for spouses in abusive relationships, and for divorced or separated taxpayers. Tax credit calculations are complicated by the fact that they are based on household rather than individual income. The agency also released a rule for implementing the ACA’s branded prescription drug fee.

Welcome to PULSE and Happy Friday. Reporting from the Rockaways, where I’m learning about fee-for-service resistance in the 1800s in my beach read “Middlemarch.” A dashing young doctor has upset the provincial town by refusing to dispense medications, offending established doctors who are accustomed to selling drugs for profit. “It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost as mischievous as quacks,” the young doc declares. “To get their own bread they must overdose the king’s lieges and that’s a bad sort of treason …”

“PULSE sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker.”

FOUR REASONS FOR BOTCHED EXECUTIONS — On Wednesday, a convicted murderer in Arizona “gasped and snorted” for more than 90 minutes as he was put to death. In May, an Oklahoma inmate grimaced and clenched his teeth during his execution. In January, an Ohio inmate gasped and choked for several minutes. These botched executions have us wondering: What’s going so terribly wrong in the criminal justice system? Pro’s Brett Norman outlines four reasons: new drug combinations, reluctance from the FDA to get involved, questionable training for prison staff who conduct executions and little oversight over and transparency about states’ execution procedures. The Pro story: http://politico.pro/1ojP5yc

CDC ALLOWS SHIPMENTS FROM ONE LAB — CDC lifted the moratorium on the transfer of biological materials from one of its high-level biosecurity labs Thursday. CDC Director Tom Frieden had issued the moratorium earlier this month after a series of safety breaches on the agency's Atlanta campus. The Clinical Tuberculosis Laboratory, which was not involved in those breaches, is no longer under the moratorium. Other high-level labs are still subject to its conditions, however, and the two facilities involved in the most recent incidents remain closed. More details: http://1.usa.gov/1lzUmwQ

GRUBER SAID WHAT? — MIT professor Jonathan Gruber is among the many liberals defending the administration’s decision to award ACA subsidies through the federal-run exchanges (the subject matter of the Halbig and King cases decided earlier this week), but the Competitive Enterprise Institute has found a 2012 video in which Gruber says the law actually withholds the subsidies in the form of tax credits to residents in those states.

--“If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits,” he told an audience at Noblis. “I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up their exchanges and that they’ll do it — but once again the politics can get ugly around this.” The video: http://bit.ly/1rfW3Dk

ABOUT 4 in 100,000 HAVE LOU GEHRIG’S DISEASE— There is currently no cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease, but new data may lead to a better understanding. Thursday the CDC released the first round of data from the National ALS Registry, finding that 12,187 people had ALS between October 2010 and December 2011. The disease was more common among whites, males, non-Hispanics and people 60-69 years old. White men and women were twice as likely to have ALS as black men and women. And across all racial groups, men were more likely to have the disease than women. The report: http://1.usa.gov/1nYhchx

LESSONS FOR SOVALDI FROM HIV RETROVIRALS — The story unfolding around the $1,000-per-pill hepatitis C treatment Sovaldi is one that we’ve heard before, writes PhRMA’s President and CEO John Castellani for CNN. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, people were worried that HIV/AIDS medications would bankrupt the health care system. They didn’t. That’s because cost containment is built into the system, he notes, with lower-cost generics becoming available over time. Critics worry that Sovaldi will raise the cost of insurance, but Castellani points out that curing hepatitis C may reduce future medical costs by preventing expensive health care interventions like liver transplants. “We need to move forward, and let the harrowing experience of HIV/AIDS patients inform our continued war against diseases like hepatitis C,” he writes. His opinion: http://cnn.it/1pheNjp

COLORADO EXCHANGE CEO LEAVING TO JOIN CIGNA—The state health insurance exchange’s CEO, Patty Fontneau, announced Thursday that she’s leaving to become president of Private Exchange Business for Cigna, the Denver Post reports. Fontneau says Connect for Health Colorado is in good shape, but others have doubts about whether the exchange will be financially sustainable after the federal funds stop flowing. She’ll leave her current post mid-August. The story: http://dpo.st/1kZbagK

BLACK & BLUMENAUER INTRODUCE BILL TO LOWER MEDICARE ADVANTAGE O-O-P COSTS — Reps. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that would reduce co-payments or coinsurance for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries with chronic conditions. The Value-Based Insured Design for Better Care Act of 2014 would give plans flexibility to lower costs for medications or services proven to have good health outcomes. For example, people with diabetes would have increased access to insulin. The bill would direct HHS to develop a demonstration program to test out V-BID methodologies in MA plans. The bill: http://1.usa.gov/UqQKq3

ICYMI: DELTA CITES EXCHANGES IN EARLY RETIREMENT OFFER — Delta Air Lines said this week that a key reason it’s offering employees a new early retirement plan is the health insurance exchanges, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Delta expects about 800 to 900 employees to take the offer. http://on-ajc.com/1nxCQNT

WHAT WE’RE READING by Paige Winfield Cunningham

The Wall Street Journal writes about the lawyer who sparked the ACA wording disputes contained in the Halbig and King cases decided this week. http://on.wsj.com/1nEW4ml

Conservative women are teaching Republicans how to talk — and how not to talk — about abortion, The New York Times reports. http://nyti.ms/1ul9aca

USA Today reports on a Philadelphia shooting in which a psychiatric patient killed his caseworker and was in turn shot by a doctor. http://usat.ly/1mKIxDx

Boston sure knows how to solve a public health problem: it’s bringing in goats to eat a major crop of poison ivy, the Boston Globe reports. http://bit.ly/1qATY99

The Advisory Board’s Dan Diamond looks at why the states turning down Medicaid expansion are also the ones that could use it the most. http://bit.ly/1picvQZ

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